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| All photographs by Nora Patrich |
I have two daughters. The older one, Alexandra is pretty
independent. The other, Hilary reminds me of my mother. I have always regretted
not telling my mother how much I loved her and how I appreciated all her
sacrifices for giving me a good education. Because of that sense of guilt I try
to do everything for Hilary to make her keep smiling that crooked smile she
inherited from me and from there from my mother.
I regret not having been curious enough to ask my-then-alive relatives the answers to questions I can no longer ask because they are
dead.
But I don’t regret how my life has been up to now and I
appreciate and treasure my 50 years of marriage to my Rosemary. Without her I would be
teaching English in Mexico while regretting that I could have been a
photographer.
I don’t regret selling our beautiful corner lot house in
Kerrisdale (the buying of it was all intelligence of my savvy wife) even though
Rosemary does. We have been able to inherit our daughters while we are still
alive. Rosemary will come around soon.
My mother sent me to a Roman Catholic high school in
Austin, Texas. I do not regret having gone there and only until a few years ago
did I lose my mentor from there, Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C. whom I saw just a
few months before he died.
I had another mentor in Mexico City, Raúl Guerrero
Montemayor who instilled in me a love for culture, manners and propriety. He
even championed my relationship with Rosemary. And like Brother Edwin I was
able to see him on his soon-to-be dying bed and tell him how I loved him and
appreciated his help in my life.
What all this is leading towards is all about two Argentine
mentors Nora Patrich and Juan Manuel Sánchez. They lived in Vancouver for many
years in a bohemian sort of life. They were painters and they painted every
day. I met them at Argentine Tango classes and I quickly attached myself to
their artist life. I could call them at any time of the day or night. They were
always keen for conversation over a mate. Best of all they never said no to any
suggestions I might have about working together. And this we did. We had a show
in which the Argentine beauty (sensational as my other mentor Sean Rossiter
would have said) Linda Lorenzo with Patrich and Sánchez and I explored our
nostalgia for Buenos Aires and Argentina. We had a large show in a South
Granville gallery. After that we worked on many projects until the two left for
Argentina on separate airplanes and then divorced.
This did not stop me from visiting the two and having
some of their enthusiasm rub off on me. Since they left I have never been able
to find a an artist in this cold city who might want to work with me on a joint
project. In particular I have not found anybody willing to sketch from life a
subject that I would photograph.
So this September at the Buenos Aires Galería Vermeer,
Nora Patrich and I are having a show (they call them muestras in BA) with the tentative name of Dos Retornos. Not three
because Sánchez died two years ago. The show will be a sort of homage to the
great painter that Sánchez was.
In our years of working together either in my then large
studio on Granville and Robson or at the Patrich/ Sánchez home I sometimes felt
irritated on the fact that Patrich would click behind me with her Nikon camera.
It was a pain. She would laugh telling me that in almost every case my behind played
a prominent central role.
Now with Sánchez dead I have been scanning these postcard-sized
photographs. Some of them have an unusual charm and point of view. But best of
all her photographs show two-and-a-half artists (I am that half!) at work.
But while I may have had regrets about other things in my
life like not telling my mother how much I loved her, working with these two
was something I savoured and realized how special it all was. The memory is all
there and the show will be a proof of it.
The pictures here are the ones that do not show bits and
pieces. All the pictures will be in a loop which will be installed in the
gallery monitor. Perhaps those who linger with them will come to understand how
lucky I have been and how lucky they will be to get that glimpse.
